I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Fit of the Week: Shield Muninn

It's rare that I go to the same race two weeks in a row, and even more rare that I feature a ship only six weeks or so after featuring it previously. But when I did Muninns a few weeks ago, I caught hell for not including a shield fit, and it does seem very appropriate to feature Black Legion's Muninn in a month when I'm talking about ships that are made to kill frigates. So, in honor of Black Legion losing some four dozen of these ships in the recent super-carrier massacre, let's talk about a shield Muninn.

The short version of dicussing this fit is to point back to last week's artillery Hurricane because the two ships have many commonalities. Like that Cane, this Muninn relies on volley damage to sweep smaller targets off the field. In the hands of a good pilot, the volley off each of these ships is 3200-3300 to overheated and bonused point range, with quite decent tracking. As with the Cane, you'll be firing Republic Fleet EMP, Fusion, or Phased Plasma in most cases to maximize volley damage, and you'll want to carry some form of Drop booster to emphasize that volley damage against smaller targets.

But it's a good idea to carry a variety of ammo, most particularly included Depleted Uranium because of the tracking bonus of that particular ammo, plus small amounts of Quake and Tremor. That said, you need not overdo it. Since you're firing artillery guns, carrying something between 500 and 1000 rounds of each type of ammo will be sufficient for all but the longest fleet battles.

Given the two ships put out roughly equal volley, the primary advantages of the Hurricane fit are cost, lock speed, and 13% higher volley. The primary advantages of this Muninn are tank, resistance, and speed. Particularly in a shield resistance bonused fleet, the Muninn tank is quite good and like most Minmatar ships the small signature is an advantage. Tank is a bit over 35k EHP before heat and the Muninn responds reasonably well under reps. The small smart bomb is defensive and intended to clear ECM drones when used in medium to large numbers by grouped Muninns. Drones are the decision of the FC, but ECM drones in large numbers will make life painful for both frigates/destroyers and the repair ships they may drag with them.

As a HAC, the Muninn is much quicker than the Cane at about 1700m/s before bonuses or implants and receives the HAC warp speed bonus.

In the case of the super-carrier fight, a fleet of these Muninns was brought in primarily to clear the interdictors that PL/N3 had brought to the party. Dictors are obviously destroyer hulls rather than frigates; that only made the Muninns more effective against them. Word has it by the time the fight was over, 47 out of the 50 dictors that PL had pre-staged for the fight were dead: the Muninns made a hash of them. It certainly ably demonstrates the efficiency of medium artillery against smaller targets! But to protect the dictors, the Muninns were given priority target status by N3's sub-cap fleet. As I mentioned, during the fight BL lost nearly 50 of these ships.

The same advice I gave for the Cane applies to this ship in a larger fight:

If you get into an actual fight in this ship, your proper position is well behind the bulk of your fleet, screening for either friendly logistics or friendly e-war. When I'm flying this kind of volley ship, I personally find it useful to sort the Overview by transversal velocity. Anything that drops to the neighborhood of 200m/s or so is worth taking a pot-shot at. This will most often happen when an inexperienced tackler turns and burns directly at you or whatever you're screening.

But unlike the Cane, the Muninn's decent performance under reps means you can engage a bit more aggressively if you like as long as you keep the tracking of artillery in mind as you do it.

All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only. You
may not have the skills needed for this exact fit. If you do not, feel
free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta
3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war. Ships can also be adjusted
to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the
pilot flying it. Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce
you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type
of ship more aggressively and well.

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